SEE YOU NEXT YEAR, MY LOVE

by Vincent Daemon

             Halloween had always been a sacred, splendid time for Old Man Richter, especially before his beloved wife Arazella had passed away. Instead, now, the autumnal season clung to him like cold and wet late November leaves. The memories often clogged his throat with a stifled and suffocating agony, filling his limbs with a series of painful skin-tug anxiety flare-ups that made every day from the onset of the season to just after the New Year not just emotionally or spiritually grueling, but physically as well. This was hell.

This time of year had always been special for the both of them. Together they shared and understood the deep romance within the alternating scents of fresh fallen and burning leaves. Together they reveled in the cool and gray cloudy days that seemed to loom ominously from mid-October on. And together they ran Richter’s Orchard, essentially a three acre lot filled with apple trees and pumpkin patches. Located just behind their house, the establishment did incredibly well, their name becoming fairly known in the Dolton area for their fresh baked apple and pumpkin pies, their kindness, and most notably for their lavish and fun Halloween displays. 

Every year they carved whatever pumpkins they didn’t sell into fun and creepy faces, lit them, and placed them in large and well organized mounds on either side of their front porch. Their large round faces burned bright with the love and peaceful tenderness the Richter’s shared for each other, and the season, drawing people from miles around. The soft orange flickering light would reflect iridescently off the smiling faces of trick-or-treaters and their chaperones. Hanging (on unseen pulleys) just on the inside of the jack-o’-mounds were silly sheet ghosts, cast in both the lights of the jack-o’-mounds and the eerie blue and red lights that illuminated the inside front porch. Old Man Richter would hide up there in the shadows, pulling on the strings so the ghosts would seem to float down at the trick-or-treaters, sending them into gales of uproarious sugar-rush laughter. Arazella would slither out from the eerie lights, dressed as a creepy witch, her lips covered in black glitter lipstick. She would disperse fresh cakes of apple and pumpkin, homemade candy corn, caramel apples, marshmallow treats, and small cups of fresh hot cider from the boiling cauldron kettle that toiled and troubled beside her. Everything smelled of cinnamon and brown sugar, of apple and pumpkin and maple and molasses. Funny thing about Arazella’s Halloween witch shtick was that she was, in fact, a witch . . . a healer and lover of all things nature and beauty. A nurturer and, when need be, a punisher. She was Richter’s Goddess and soul mate and reason for living. 

Old man Richter felt truly lost without Arazella by his side. After the cancer had taken her he sunk into a deep, horrid depression from which he never fully recovered. It had worn on him hard to watch her body wither away, to be consumed from the inside out by this tumorous monstrosity. Every part of her seemed to just fade away a bit more every day . . . every part of her, that is, but her shining spirit.

He spent those long and cold winter months after her passing, that brutal holiday season, consuming whiskey and Arazella’s left over pain medications. He did anything he could to not have to face head-on the unbearable heartache and quaking loneliness that raged so deep within him. He would spend long nights in the bitter cold, not even feeling it due to the narco-numb, with his arms wrapped around her memorial stone, his face pressed against the cold and smooth polished marble surface, crying deep and heavy sobs into the early daylight hours and longing merely for a kiss on his cheek. He even contemplated suicide, but had thought better of it, feeling Arazella’s preternatural disapproval of the idea in every molecule of the air he breathed in. 

            Come spring he snapped out of it a bit, fighting through the bitterness to keep the intense misery at bay. He scattered her ashes on the ground of the pumpkin patch, as she had requested, just before he had tilled it over and planted. It was incredibly difficult to do alone, as he was in his mid-sixties. But he was bound and determined to put up some form of pumpkin mounds outside his house, to appease both Arazella’s spirit and the children, which they could never have. Arazella had been barren in life, a large part of the reason why that holiday in particular had meant so much to them (beyond their spiritual leanings of course). It was the eternal essence of releasing the inner child. A night you could be yourself with absolutely no judgments from the world around you.

Arazella wanted her ashes in the pumpkin patch in order to fertilize the ground, to create little lives that would bring nothing but happiness and joy to others, which it pained her so not to be able to achieve on this plane. It was a beautiful sentiment of positive energy in the face of truly, deeply mixed emotions. That was why Old Man Richter had loved her so.

Into the hot summer months, Richter had hired James, a slovenly and alcoholic wretch of a spoiled seventeen year old snot. There was no way the Old Man could do all that labor by himself, and this kid worked cheap. He was a necessity. Things started off sketchy immediately, the boy always intoxicated on cheap pilfered liquor or huffed gasoline and paint fumes, being lazy and lethargic and argumentative and, worst of all, clumsy, all over Richter’s growing grounds. There was backtalk, smart assing and sass. The Old Man didn’t have the patience of his wife (who would have merely just turned his own words against him) and was quick to temper at the boy, albeit justifiably so. 

But Richter needed the help, with the harvest just around the corner. So he tolerated James the best he could. Until one late August day he caught the boy in the house, with his girlfriend Janice. They were in Richter’s bedroom, pocketing money and coin, Arazella’s jewelry, and even the Old Man’s stash of cannabis he kept around for sleep and relaxation. “Quick, hide the stash, it’s Old Man Richter!” James yelped as Richter caught them. 

Worst of all in this utmost betrayal of an already loose and necessitated trust, the bed, which stilled smelled of Arazella, had obviously been used for their own lusts. A conspicuous slimy wetness was soaking into the mattress, on Arazella’s side of the bed . . . the spot where she died. He lashed out at the boy, James emptying everything from his pockets except the stash, which he threatened to tell people that Richter had sold him. Richter came at the boy and his skuzzy girlfriend, chasing them out of his house. Richter ran out to the porch with his fist raised, bellowing “Get offa my lawn!” at the top of his lungs, straining his throat. James threatened to come back and trash everything, and the two ran off down the driveway parking lot. Richter merely went back in the house, began to clean up the wet spot, and wept.

By October 30^th, Richter had managed to do almost everything himself. He harvested and sold his pumpkins and apples, and even carved what was left. The faces no longer had the same chipper creepiness but wore long, saddened expressions, resembling forsaken ghouls lost forever in the lonely cold of an eternal midnight. Their inner glow no longer seemed as bright, and the ghosts that hung on either side looked merely like hung sheets with black-marker eyes. They would not be flying this year, merely swaying in the cool breeze. He did manage to build the mounds. Standing back to check his work, he noticed it all seemed so very lifeless, so empty. Arazella had said, before she passed, that her spirit would always be there, in their “pumpkin children”, in the love of this season and all others, but he had yet to feel it. So he went into the house and watched classic scary movies until he fell asleep.

At roughly 3 a.m., Richter was awoken by several loud thudding sounds. He sat up on the couch, remaining silent and listened closely, acutely. At the loud shatter of breaking glass he jumped up and ran outside, throwing the porch lights on. There were James and Janice, smashing jack o’lanterns and beer bottles all over Arazella’s memorial stone. In fact, it even looked like the boy was zipping up his jeans, having urinated on the now filth encrusted memoriam. With the bright of the porch lights turning on, the two began to skitter away into the darkness. In a fit of sheer rage Richter grabbed a small and uncarved decorative pumpkin and tossed it full force at the little destructive bastard as he fled. 

The pumpkin nailed James square in the back of the head, exploding it’s guts all over the kid and sending him into a full on face plant. Janice stopped running and began laughing and pointing at her fallen comrade, proving there is no honor among thieves. James stood up and gave the Old Man a burning stare down, his nose bleeding, pumpkin gore drizzling down his salty face. He pointed, growling out “Tonight, Old Man Richter, just you wait. You’re done.” The two then sauntered off into the night.

Richter went and surveyed the damage to the memorial stone. It was covered in smashed jack- o’-lantern and broken glass, urine and dirt. The feeling within him was no longer one of depression or anxiety or sadness, but one of violation, intrusion, and rage. He spent hours cleaning the stone back to shining perfection, cleaning out every groove of every engraved letter. He went back into the house and laid back down on the couch, his mind performing a slow burn and his muscles tense with the need for retribution. But he knew better, this kid was true trouble. He swallowed it all the best he could, and tried to get lost in some long stashed pain pills, a few shots of whiskey, and The Creature From The Black Lagoon on the t.v. The old man was just tired, had no more tears to shed.

Halloween night finally came around. Richter was exhausted, his mind a buzzing hive of simmering anger and too many thoughts. He played nice for the families, lighting his depressive jack-o’-mounds and leaving out baskets of prepackaged candies for the children to have at. There were no cakes or marshmallow treats, donuts or candy apples or hot cauldron cider. There was no longer a sweetly sinister witch with black glitter lips to feed the little ghosties and devils and ghouls and princesses that wandered the long and beautiful full moon night. There were no dancing ghosts. There were only still sheets and piles of sad glowing faces and fun size Snickers. 

By 9 p.m. it seemed that the trick or treating festivities had come to an end. Richter was inside the house, drinking a bit, smoking up, and doing what he could to cope with his first holiday alone since the late 1960’s. He was watching John Carpenter’s Prince Of Darkness, the only light coming from his flickering television . . . and waiting. 

It wasn’t long before he could hear footsteps outside in the gravel of his driveway, rustling through the leaves. Footsteps creeping up slowly, slyly onto his porch. He could hear the whispering voices of two teenagers fucking with the wrong Old Man.

THUD! Something large and wet had slammed his outside screen door. He got up and silently marched over to the door and opened it. He could see and smell the shit sliming its way down the glass. He could also see the burning bag of doodie right there on the porch. With a quick panic reaction he threw the door open and began to stomp on the flaming bag of stinking human waste. He was stomping with such fury that he threw out his back, and with a bellow slipped and fell, smacking his head on the floorboards. He couldn’t move, felt paralyzed with pain all through his body. “MY BACK!” he managed to bark out involuntarily.

“Ha! Old fool. We’re gonna fuck this shit shack up, you old prick!” James bellowed. He and his girl began to whack Arazella’s memorial stone with twenty pound sledgehammers, large chunks of the fine marble exploding every which way with each loud ping of a contact point. 

Richter could only lay there, incapacitated, watching and too immobile to make it stop. His head was beginning to feel woozy, and he wasn’t quite sure what it was that was happening right before he completely lost consciousness. It was, however, one of the most odd things his eyes had ever bore witness too. 

James and Janice were completely involved in the total destruction of the stone, when Janice noticed a bright orange glow, increasing in intensity, reflecting off the chipped rock. 

“James?”

“What!”

“The jack-o’-lanterns are all facing us. They weren’t doing that before.” James noticed she was no longer beating on the memorial stone. 

“C’mon, hurry up! The old man’s out cold and we ain’t got all night!”

“JAMES!”

He finally turned and saw that the jack-o’-mounds were indeed facing them. “So what, probably one his stupid infantile Halloween gimmicks.”

“I think we should stop . . .” Her voice wavered like the terrified little girl she really was.

James dropped his sledge with annoyance. “Will you stop? They’re just pumpkins!” He walked over and grabbed the nearest one, thrusting his hand into its carved sad mouth. He picked it up and said “Look!” as he obnoxiously waved it in Janice’s face. As he reeled his arm back to hurl it, he noticed the expression on the face of the jack-o’-lantern twist into a horrific grimace, a kind of mean he had never seen before. Its mouth snarled up like that of an enraged wolf, and it bit down on the son of a bitch’s right hand. He shrieked a wordless sound and ran in a circle, trying in vain to get the clamped gourd off.  

The jack-o’-lantern only came off when James’ hand did. 

Janice looked to the mounds and they were all rolling off of each other, rolling toward them. Their faces were grimaced and mocking, just as the first biter’s had been. She was frozen in place with stark and paramount terror as they approached her. 

James merely fell to his knees, clutching his bloody stump. 

The jack-o’-lanterns surrounded them, creating a small circular wall around the two as they froze, both in different states of shock but shock nonetheless. Jack did not see the two sheet-ghosts slowly dislodge themselves from the front porch, but Janice did. As they started to float over, their faces also became something more than two marker eyes on white sheet. These sheets were now alive and their visages had become that of tortured souls looking to share the wealth, part hateful smile and part vengeful snarl. Janice’s flight response finally kicked in and she tried to run and jump over the rolling, ever so closely encircling wall of carved demon pumpkins. 

With a sudden and unexpected rapid-fire machine gun burst, the pumpkins all began to spit flaming hot seeds into the eyes of Janice and James. Janice brought her hands to her face with a howl and also now fell to her knees. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she whimpered from behind her hands.

As for James, the extreme trauma of losing his hand (and his loss of blood from the dismemberment) seemed to cancel out all other stimuli in his new little world of agony. 

Neither one of them noticed the sheets drop slightly over the jack-o’-lanterns glowing mouths, and neither one noticed that the floating ghost sheets had caught fire until each sheet draped over the two of them. James merely curled into a silent shivering ball, while Janice began to do a dance of seared suffering beneath the flaming sheet. The jack-o’-lantern wall edged even closer, the angry gourds rolling on top of one another like some kind of strange orange vegetable igloo. Then darkness . . . silence.

When Old Man Richter had finally awoken, the first rays of light were beginning to show in the sky. He sat up, almost no pain present in his back. Still a little woozy, he shook his head out, trying to recall what the hell had happened. The boy, he remembered, and that awful girl. Arazella’s stone.

He walked over to the stone and saw on the ground two sledgehammers right next to his two ghost sheets that for some inexplicable reason (to his mind) were no longer on the porch. They appeared to be a little singed on the edges, and they were covered in a strange black glitter. He then noticed the pumpkin mounds, and they seemed to have been moved. Also, their faces were different. They no longer wore the moribund frowns of lonely soullessness, but instead seemed to be filled with life. They were now smiling. And they each also had a light coating of black glitter around the tops.

Dick Richter went over to his wife’s stone, amazed and even elated to see not a single scratch in it. The smooth marble was so polished in fact that he could clearly see his reflection in the light of the early morning. He looked into his perfect reflection closely, and noticed on his right cheek a large black glitter lipstick kiss. Tears began to stream from his eyes, and he watched the jack-o’-lantern children roll up around his legs, smiling their silly cheerful grins at him. Tears of seeds and pulp sluiced from their joyous, shining eyes. 

The pain was leaving, that constant tug of loneliness and misery was lifting like a wedding veil between two worlds. His body was not aching, his mind not racing. Arazella had always been with him. He looked back to the stone and noticed, written in the same black glitter that kissy-smudged his cheek, Arazella’s words of sweetness and truth and eternity: SEE YOU NEXT YEAR, MY LOVE XOXOXO. 

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For A Rare Hallowed Eve

Story by John Shirley

THE SOFTEST PILLOW

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the FREEZINE of

Fantasy and Science 

Fiction

THE PERFECT PUMPKIN

by John Claude Smith

     “If it wasn’t a week before Halloween, I’d be scared crazy.  But I know you well enough, Danny, to know that you like to tell stories, and I’ve already heard this one a dozen times over the last two weeks.”

     “But it’s true, Melinda.  Cutter’s farm is where old Dr. Ranier does abortions, or at least did them.  Look, it’s perfect: it’s just far enough out of town as to be kind of anon...anonymous.  He used to be a doctor, a…a baby doctor—”

     “Obstetrician.”

     “Yeah, yeah, an obstetrician.  And he was disbarred—”

     “That’s for a lawyer.”

     “Well, shit, Brainiac!  He lost his license and moved out here, about ten, maybe twelve-years-ago, and since he’s not really a farmer, he has to have some income, so he—”

     “So he sets up office as a country abortionist—”

     “And the babies are supposed to come back to haunt anybody who trespasses—”

     “Stop!  I’ve heard enough.  He must be doing some farming now, otherwise, where’d all these pumpkins come from?” 

     “I dunno, they must grow wild.  Creepy stuff, eh?”

     “Just nightmares or rumors.  Made-up stories meant to scare teenagers from having sex, and in this case, ‘cause of the abortionist slant, getting pregnant and all that.  Kind of a gruesome safe sex message, don’t you think?  And isn’t that what all horror stories made primarily for teenagers are up to, anyway?  Just like in the movies, if you’re a teenager and you have sex, the boogyman’s gonna get you—ooooOOOOOoooo, I am  so frightened.”

     With whiplash precision, she shifted her attitude from mockingly scared to salaciously seductive, easily distracting him.  “Danny, oh, Danny, bab-eeeee...” She purred the last syllable, long and languid.  She grabbed his crotch, squeezing hard, whispering something nasty and oh-so-enticing in his ear.  As his penis turned to steel, his brain turned to mush.  

     Having gotten his attention, she let go and backed away.  “You gonna help me get a perfect pumpkin from this patch or not?”

     “What about my—”

     “Later, big boy, when we’re out of range of any sexually oppressed boogymen disguised as abortionist farmers.”

      Danny Cruise peered out at the fog-mottled field, wispy tendrils like plumes of thickening smoke eerily weaving through the pumpkins, looking like a congregation of ghosts…or a herd of monstrous beasts lashing the pumpkins with writhing tentacles.  His imagination sprang back to life with a potency that unnerved him while coinciding with the deflation of his penis.  Melinda Harner, his girlfriend, folded her arms across her burgeoning bosom, trying to fend off the October chill.  She peered at him, obstinate in her quest to obtain the perfect pumpkin.  Now that she had spotted what she claimed was the most perfect pumpkin for miles around, in which she would carve the winner in the school contest, something that brought a wee bit of fame in a small town like Bloomfield, she was dead set on obtaining this pumpkin, and only this pumpkin.  No other pumpkin would suffice.     

     Danny hopped over the barbed-wire fence, ragged metal tips ripping two fingers.  He winced, put the stinging fingers in his mouth, and sprinted toward the fog-embraced pumpkin patch.

     “Which one did you want?”  His voice seemed not to carry, trapped in the puffy white shroud of fog.   But it did carry, and she responded

     “There,” Melinda harrumphed, pointing to his right at the perfect pumpkin for her to carve a masterpiece.  Her voice hit Danny with the force of a thunderclap; goosebumps tickled his flesh. 

     After having heard about the fat, perfect pumpkins in this patch, as well as the sordid recent history of the farm via whispers in the hallways at Lincoln High, anxiously retold by Danny mere minutes ago, Melinda knew she had to check it out.  Her nature was competitive and she was always looking for that special edge.  If this patch actually had the perfect pumpkin she coveted, she knew the edge would be hers.  No horror stories were going to stand in her way.  

     “Here?” he said, pointing at one of the dozen or so seemingly perfect, unblemished pumpkins in the direction she had pointed.  How could she even tell the difference?   

     “No, there,” she bellowed, the volume almost knocking him over again.  It was cold and he was tired and if he didn’t really love her, he’d already be anywhere but here with a space heater melting his icy flesh and thawing out his freezing blood. 

     Without speaking, he pointed, and she shook her head, yes—thank God!  He pulled out his switchblade and cut the coarse vine, trying to disengage the pumpkin.  After a brief struggle he was victorious, but noticed he’d smeared blood all over the ragged stem.  

     He plucked it from its roost, amazed by its weight.  It was about as big as a slightly super-sized basketball.  Not huge, but its heft made his arms ache.  She better be really appreciative for this, he thought, and ran back to the fence.  He handed the pumpkin to her so he could hop over the fence again.  

     “Careful, it’s heavy,” he said, as he put it in her eager hands.  She grunted and agreed.

     “Damn!  For its size, that’s gotta be the heaviest pumpkin I’ve ever felt.”

     Danny braced himself and leaped, this time with even less grace, catching his foot and plopping down hard on his butt.  Melinda laughed at his awkward predicament.  He frowned at her.

     “What?  I do this favor for you and you laugh at me now, ‘cause I’m cold and tired and…”

     She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead as he brushed the weeds out of his hair and clothes.

     “Carry this, would ya?”  More insistent than requesting, already handing him the pumpkin.

     “I’m just your slave—”

     “Slave to my beguiling charms.”  She put on the act, puppy dog eyes and pouting lips on full display. 

     They started the two-mile trek back into town, their pace brisk, trying to keep warm.

     “It’s probably cursed.  Probably why I tripped up going over the fence.”

     “You’re just clumsy.  There’s no curse for takin’ a pumpkin.  No dead babies gonna haunt you.  I’m just gonna carve a winner out of this one.”

     “That stuff is true.  I mean, all that about Dr. Ranier doing abortions and stuff.”  He put his fingers in his mouth again, balancing the pumpkin against his chest.  Apparently the cuts were deeper than he’d thought, and continued to bleed profusely. 

     They both fell silent for a handful of minutes, purposeful strides taking over as the night grew even colder.  The overcast skies portended rain and they just wanted to make it home before it started. 

     And then Danny stumbled, dropping the pumpkin.  Not hard, catching it before it really hit the ground, but enough to have it land with a leaden thump on the dirt.

     “Damn it, klutz!  Do you need walking lessons or what?”  Melinda was beside herself with anger, squatting to inspect the pumpkin.  All this for naught, she thought; all this for naught.

     “Shit, Melinda.  It’s not like I meant to—”

     “You bleedin’ on it?”

     “Yeah, cut my finger on the fence, bled on the stem.”

     Melinda scooted away from the pumpkin, inexplicably alarmed.  “How can that be?  The pumpkin’s got blood comin’ from inside.”

     They both watched as a thin line of blood trickled from a minuscule crack at the bottom, where it had hit the ground.  The red liquid pooled in the dirt.

     “T-That’s impossible,” she said.  “Can’t be any blood comin’ from inside a pumpkin, only pumpkin, seeds and all.  You must have bled a lot more than you thought.”

     She forced a smile, obviously in denial of what she was witnessing.  More blood seeped from the crack. 

     Danny pulled out his switchblade and approached the pumpkin.  He knelt before it, not really sure what he was going to do, but feeling safer with the knife in his hand. 

     “Danny?”

     With suddenness, curiosity took over, and he plunged the knife into the thick hide of the pumpkin.  Blood gushed out, mixed with another unknown fluid that diluted the crimson tide, along with stringy pumpkin guts and pumpkin seeds, spattering the dirt and his shoes.  He pried with the knife and his fingers, pulling the pumpkin apart. 

     “Oh, Christ!”  He moaned in revulsion at what he saw. 

     Melinda squealed, “What is it, Danny? What is it?”

     The pumpkin had split wide open like a cracked egg.  Danny jumped to his feet, hands dripping wet.  An intolerable stench was belched from within the split pumpkin, forcing him to cover his face with his sleeve, while Melinda openly retched, dry and empty.  She was on her feet as well, fingers digging crescents into Danny’s arms.  He didn’t feel a thing.  They both just stared in horror and disgust.

     Within the womb of the pumpkin, entwined within a network of ripped veins, a ruptured clear sac, and pumpkin guts and seeds, two large yellow eyes, like jaundiced moons devoid of pupils, attempted to blindly seek out the source of intrusion.  It probably did not see them, thought Danny, as his stomach roiled like a fist-sized hurricane, battering his insides. 

     It was a fetus, a mutation of inconceivable ugliness borne of nightmares and rumors and curses made real. 

     “Oh my God, Danny…Danny!”  Melinda cringed, teetering on hysterical.

     The obscenity, skin stained with blood but otherwise as orange as a healthy pumpkin, turned itself in the direction of Melinda’s voice, the tiny holes where ears should be steering it in their direction.  Gurgling noises emanated from its throat, wet sounds and orange spittle passing by its lipless slit of a mouth. 

     “We need to go—now!”  Melinda, beside herself, doing a nervous dance of desperation.  She wanted away from here posthaste…or sooner!       

     “Wait,” Danny said.  “I think it’s trying to…say something.”

     Melinda pulled harder on Danny’s arm, afraid to leave without him, the night and clouds and vast darkened landscape uninviting despite her urgency to run as far away from here as possible.   

     “C’mon! Let’s go!”

     The sound that rose from the baby’s mouth unhinged the muscles in Danny’s legs.  He slumped to the ground, transfixed by the fetal abomination squirming and convulsing and hideously alive within the pumpkin.  Melinda tumbled with him, but not for long.  He scrambled to his feet and dragged her to hers, his feet pounding the dirt like a chorus of hammers, matching the freight train rhythm of his heart.  His swiftness almost lifted Melinda into the air as one would a kite.   The utterance, repeated again and again, insistent, scarred the night with its cawing message, resonant and haunting, cursing both of their ears forever. 

     One word, only one, but Danny and Melinda would remember it until the day they died. 

     “Daddy,” it screeched, it begged.

     “Daddy!”      

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SEE YOU NEXT YEAR, MY LOVE

by Vincent Daemon  

on Devil's Night

 @

the FREEZINE of

Fantasy and Science

Fiction 

SAM'S HALLOWEEN NIGHTMARE

story and art by Gil James Bavel 

     

     Sam awoke with an uneasy feeling.  He'd been out of sorts lately, kind of under the weather.  Things seemed amiss; something was out of place.

     Sam's stomach rumbled, so he shambled upstairs and made a double-decker turkey sandwich.  He then went downstairs and turned on the TV.  A news anchorman was reading off a sheet.

     "These strange abductions have continued throughout the week, and—"

     Sam turned the channel.  "Eh.  More news."  Another newscaster's grim face stared out at Sam.

     "...Seems able to explain their mysterious disappearances.  Hundreds have reported strange, unexplained marks in the soil, and—"

     Again, Sam turned the channel, disgusted.  Another newscast.

     "—Unbelievable events seem to be the result of extraterrestrial influence.  That can be the only explanation, says Dr. Ima Na Lien, Korean-born physicist and professor at the Univ—"

"I hate news!" said Sam as he turned off the TV.  He had finished his sandwich, anyway.  Still hungry, Sam went back to the fridge and consumed an entire carton of yogurt while the door was open.  "Eh."  Still hungry.  Sam closed the door.  Bored and unsated, he went outside to play with Wolfgang, a mentally underprivileged dog that had very serious sociological problems.  Drooling, for instance.  Consequently, playing with said dog proved entertaining for approximately one nanosecond.  "Feh."  Boredom.

     Back inside, Sam slapped in a Beatles tape, switched it on and sat down to read some IBM DOS manuals.  After a few hours, the phone rang.

     "Hello," Sam answered apathetically.

     "Hey Sam!  How's it going?"  It was Glen.

     "Not too bad.  What's up?"

     "Nada.  Want to work on the display?" Glen asked.

     "Sure. I'll be over when I get there."

     "Okay, see you then.  Bye."

     "Bye."  Sam hung up, turned off the lights, went upstairs, and found his bike.  He locked up and headed for Glen's.

     On the way, Sam noted the odd lack of cars on the road.  There was no traffic at all.  Unusual, he thought, for a Saturday afternoon.  All the way to Glen's, he noticed a complete absence of traffic.  A few junked-out cars laid gutted by the side of the road as if in some genre post-holocaust movie.  Finally, Sam rolled into Glen's driveway.  He could hear music blaring from the window, the Clash, he thought.  He locked his bike up and went upstairs.  The door was open.

     Walking into the room, Sam saw a huge skeletal sculpture made of chicken-wire in one corner of the front room.  Glen was adding the head to the thing, which stood over ten feet tall, including the addition.  Glen was using a stepladder.  Sam could see that underneath the chicken-wire was a massive network of gears, wires and complicated electronics. 

     "Wow," said Sam, closing the door.  "That's great."

     "Pretty cool, huh?" Glen said, stepping off the ladder so Sam could see.  Stage blood drooled out of the mouth, from between inch-long ivory white fangs.  The creature had eyes made of slime-colored gel that were lit from behind.  All in all, it was an evil-looking thing.

     "I'd hate for that to come to life," Sam mused.    

     "No shit," Glen responded.  "And come to life it does.  Check it out."  With that, he picked up what looked like a large homemade VCR remote, and pushed a few buttons.  Wires dangling from the remote swayed with the movement.

     Suddenly, the beast began walking forward, remarkably quickly and with surprising fluidity.  It looked like an AT-AT from Star Wars, or some kind of Ray Harryhausen animation.  King Kong scaled down to a Halloween prop.

     Sam was amazed.  "That is unbelievable." he commented.  Glen smiled, pushing other buttons and moving levers.  The robotic creature responded by gnashing its teeth, moving its clawed, fully articulated hands and making kung-fu motions with its arms.  The halogens in its eyes blinked on and off.  Sam just shook his head, helplessly awestruck.  "That really is wild,” he said.

     Glen turned it off, cleaned up, and, changing the subject, said, "So Sam, have you been watching the news lately?"

     "Uh... not really, no."

     "You haven't heard about these weird happenings that are sweeping the nation?"

     "No, Glen, tell me about it!" Sam said sarcastically.

     Glen smirked.  "Just watch."  He turned on the TV and started applying papier-mâché to the skeletal frame he had been working on.

     Sam sat down, forced to watch more of the same bullshit he'd turned off at home.  A bunch of media hound journalists making another big deal out of some cockamamie story or other.  There was a guy holding a microphone shouting frantically while a bunch of idiots in military uniforms holding guns and other weapons went running around behind him like chickens with their heads cut off.  The camera was moving around erratically as if the cameraman were running or something.  What was that?  Some kind of a flying saucer?  Whoa.  What the fuck, was this the War Of The Worlds TV show that bombed?  Or "V", or something?  But Glen had said this was news.  Probably some military coup or more of that Soviet bullshit.  But what could that huge ship-like object be?  Gotta be a prop.  Some kind of a joke.  Yeah, joke.  Ha.  Funny.  Shit, man what was coming out of that thing?  Ha, ha, good one.  Jesus.  This is unreal, Sam thought.

    The military men on TV took up defensive positions and a couple of them fell down screaming, their blood coating the lens of one live camera.  The angle switched to another camera, one that was moving even more erratically than the first.  In this shot, Sam could see the cameraman running along with a small group of soldiers, toward an archway behind a military vehicle.  There were some men already hunkered down behind it, one with a two-way radio, and it looked like he was trying to reach somebody on it and wasn't having much luck, because he kept hitting it and putting it up to his ear.  The camera, along with the group, came around the jeep, and on the other side you could see a man on a stretcher, writhing around in pain from his obviously near-mortal wounds.  He was coated in his own blood, which emanated from long, deep cuts all over his body.  He was reaching for the camera, mouthing words Sam couldn't hear, for the sound on the camera was off, or not getting through to the network.

     Suddenly the picture changed.  Geraldo Rivera stood in front of the Capital Building in D. C. with about forty or fifty National Guardsmen, as if he had just taken it over.  That'd be great, Sam thought.  We are now a communist dictatorship, and Geraldo Rivera is in control, thank you very much.  Sam could imagine living in such a country all too easily.  Geraldo's face peered down from huge posters and video screens all over the nation, and a quiet, soothing voice said, you will watch the Geraldo Rivera show every day at five, six, and ten.  Scary.

     But that was not the case.  The sound was now on, and Geraldo was walking calmly backward into the guardsmen, saying that the Capital Building was definitely a safe haven for now.  Safe from what? Sam wondered.  Sam realized that Geraldo was surrounded by the soldiers; they were protecting him.  Either that or they were going to turn on him any second and gang up on him for misrepresenting the military on his show about National Reserve Trainees and the Cokefreak Transvestite Generals who love them.  But for now, at least, it looked like he was safe from them, and they were moving as a group into the Capital Building.  Geraldo continued.

     "Yes, it seems that for the moment we are safe.  But who knows when the aliens will strike next, or if they will strike at all?  For comment on this, we will soon be interviewing Phillipe Lintel, an expert on extraterrestrials who claims the government knew about this all along and could have prevented this horrible catastrophe.  But first, let's go back to Dan in the studio and recap the events that, yesterday and today, may have signaled the beginning of the end of the world.  Dan?"

     Sam couldn't believe his ears.  As he watched, the CBS newseye logo appeared on the screen like some surveillance monitor and faded to the image of Dan Rather.  Sam looked at Glen and assumed an incredulous expression.

     "So the world is ending." Sam said, bewildered.

     "Yeah, pretty cool, huh?  Glen didn't seem too concerned.  He continued applying the dripping wet strips of papier-mâché to the beast, which was becoming quickly covered with the stuff.

     "So what exactly is going on?" Sam asked, scratching his head and squinting.

     "Well, watch, and you'll find out." Glen responded, pointing to the TV with one finger.  He noticed some flour-and-water about to drip off of it, and put it in his mouth, licking it off.  "Mmm," he said, looking at Sam with big eyes.  "Tasty."

     Sam laughed and turned back to the tube.  There were newsgraphics on the screen showing the last two days' events, from the destruction of a small town that apparently was called Grover's Mill to the very recent takeover of Washington.  In between those events, it seemed tens of thousands of Americans had been killed by aliens who for some reason had come to earth and started slaying them indiscriminately without any consideration at all for their human or even civil rights.  Most politically incorrect.

     As Dan Rather's voiceover explained, the most recent events in Washington led experts to believe that there was little hope in an organized American or even human revolt against the extraterrestrials, for all and every weapon we had at our command had been used to no avail.

    The graphics faded into a live shot, and Dan Rather said in a hurried voice, "Now for an important live report, back to the Capital Building with Geraldo."  Indeed, Geraldo was there, holding the mike up to the mouth of a short nerdly gentleman inside the Capital Building which seemed to be in remarkably good condition even though it was charred and blackened from what looked to be large weapons fire.  Sam could see that the walls were on the verge of crumbling, due to giant holes that were almost certainly caused by artillery.  In the background behind the encircling ring of National Guard troops, military vehicles stood at the ready, their own guns and armaments manned by helmeted soldiers.  With one hand on his earphone, Geraldo spoke into his shirt mic.

     "Before we get a report on the cover-up, Dan, we have a team with a lead out in the field which may prove informative."

     Rather's voice came on from the studio.  "Can you set this up for us, Geraldo?"

     "Sure, Dan.  About twelve minutes ago, at three-forty, uh, Eastern Standard Time, a group of elite forces attacked and breached an alien attack ship and were inside for about three of those twelve minutes before they were forced to withdraw.  All of the members of that team were, uh, killed except one, who claims the aliens vaporized them with weapons unknown on earth.  This one soldier, who is even now on the verge of dying from incredibly strange wounds, demands air time in spite of his condition and insists his report is crucial to the survival of mankind."

     Rather's voice came once again from the TV as Geraldo and the nerdly gentleman waited on camera and fidgeted slightly inside the macho-looking group of Guardsmen.  "This is live, then?"

     Rivera nodded.  "Yes, Dan, and I must caution viewers, this is absolutely unedited tape and possibly not suitable for young children or the weak-hearted."  He shook his head and smiled.  "Although, I can say, this is hardly the time to be worried about violating FCC conduct code."

     "Or ratings." Rather added.

     Geraldo nodded.  "Or ratings."

     The video feed switched back to the camera near the military vehicle and the archway, and the Soldier on the stretcher seemed to be moving quite a bit less than he had been.  An IV tube was taped into his arm, and a group of harried-looking paramedics were attending to his wounds, although he was obviously about to die.  It looked to Sam as if he was dead already, and he couldn't understand why he was still moving.  The guy must have incredible willpower, training, or drugs to still be alive.  It occurred to Sam that this was the most graphic television he had ever seen on any network, cable, broadcast or otherwise.

     An off-screen arm held a mike near the dying man's mouth, while the camera slowly zoomed in on his face.  He looked to be a burly young man of about twenty-five or so, handsome in his clean-shaven if blood-strewn face.  He had dark hair and features, and wore an olive-green cap and camos.  His shirt was open to the waist, and various lifesaving devices were hooked up to his body.  A pillow under his head made it possible for him to view the camera, and for viewers to see his face completely.

     He started to speak, but a little blood came out of his mouth and was quickly wiped away by a nearby medical technician.  The arm holding the mike moved a little, and Sam could hear the muffled sounds of the mike moving around coming from the TV.  In the background, a voice over a radio was saying, "Clear the area.  Clear the area."  Finally, in a hoarse but clear voice, the soldier spoke.

     “They didn’t notice us at first.  They just sat there completely still, looking at each other as if they were communicating non-verbally."  The soldier was remarkably lucid for his condition, Sam thought.  "Then, when the team commander began looking around, directing us to cover the aliens and take everything that wasn't bolted down, they started talking in high-pitched buzzing voices, and I felt like they were talking to us, not to each other because I got the impression that we were not welcome in their craft and that we were to leave immediately.  The aliens stood up, uh, there were three of them," the soldier paused momentarily, turning his head slightly to spit blood, and continued as a medic brushed his lips with a wet cloth, "and they looked us directly in the eyes.  God, their eyes, their eyes..."  The soldier began sobbing and shaking his head back and forth.  "What I saw in that ship—we all saw it—instantly numbed my mind when I recognized its purpose. It was horrible.  I can't—”  The soldier closed his eyes and grimaced as if the very thought of what he saw was killing him.  He took a deep breath, with some effort, and moved on from the topic.  "They picked up these little devices, and pointed them at us, commanding us with their minds to leave at once.  My team commander gave the order to fire, which we did.  Five of us with automatic assault weapons weren't enough to even faze them.  The aliens just stood there, rounds bouncing off them like Superman, and pointed those little rayguns at us.  After our weapons had reached overheating, we stopped firing and followed our orders to reload.  We'd only gotten the old rounds ejected when they opened up on us.  I was in back, reloading, which is why I survived, I guess.  The three in front were instantly vaporized, like fuckin' water on fire."  The soldier choked spasmodically for a moment, coughed up some more blood, and asked for water.  He was given a drink and cleaned up some more by medics on the scene, and then he continued.  His voice sounded worse, and he periodically sputtered and choked on the blood that was running down his throat.

     "The guy in front of me and I began backing out, but he was so devastated by their weapons that he just collapsed and died.  Whuff—" the soldier inhaled hard and choked again, tensing up into a ball before the medical staff around him pushed him flat back onto the stretcher.  He started shaking, and swallowed. 

     "I backed out and ran for my life; my whole body was numb.  I turned to look back, and I saw the aliens standing at the doorway to their craft holding their hands up like they were waving.  Chrrk—” He coughed and tried hard to breathe; he was dying.  The medics moved in between his body and the camera to administer aid.  He motioned them away, apparently, for they moved out of the way again, and he looked directly into the camera with red bloodshot eyes.  He got up on one elbow, tears streaking his face.  Sam felt sorry for him, empathetic.  It was easy to imagine himself as this Joe Average soldier, except of course, that he was Special Forces or whatever.  It could be anybody.  The soldier spoke again, perhaps for the last time.

     "Mr. President, if you're watching," he said, coughing up blood, "if you're watching (wheeze), listen please, sir.  (wheeze wheeze) The aliens have a device in their power that (wheeze) we are powerless to stop.  (wheeze) In their craft, I saw these little (wheeze) black pyramids on their control panel, and (wheeze wheeze) I knew when I was in contact with their minds that (wheeeze whzzaok) they were going to... (hack) ...they told me... (wheeze hack)... They are going to use them to destroy all of us.  (hurrk wheeze cough)...We have... oh God"  The soldier was coughing up blood now almost continually, "...ruined our planet, which is their property.  It belongs (gurrk) to th-hh-hem.  They are killing us wh-hi-th those pyramids.  Our only hope is to neutralize their pyramids with...(gackk wheeze kk-kk-cough) our minds.  They operate on a frequency of thought.  I picked all of this up from mental contact, that's why (ghurkk wheeze) they tried to kill us, they thought I'd never make it...MR. PRESIDENT," he said, sitting up all the way and looking directly into the camera, "TELL ALL AMERICANS TO KILL THEM WITH THEIR MINDS!!  THINK THEM DEAD!!"  The soldier was becoming frantic; ripping what was left of his body to shreds in his fever.  He was shaking his head back and forth as if waking from a bad dream, spraying blood all over the medics and the crew.  "FOCUS ON THEIR PYRAMIDS WITH YOUR MINDS AND MAKE THEM EXPLODE!!  IT'S THE ONLY WAY!!  DEAD, DEAD, DEAD!!  THOUGHTKILL THEM!!"  The soldier kept on screaming but his voice was gone and instead there was only a stream of gore coming out of his mouth.  His head was coming gradually unglued and before the medical team could calm him down and prevent him from tearing himself apart with his paroxysms, he was dead.  The bloody grounds and astonished personnel were a testament to the soldier's statement, that the world was indeed at an end if it could not be prevented.

     The offscreen arm withdrew the mic, and a medic threw a sheet over the stretcher and the soldier's dead body.  The white sheet became instantly soaked with blood, and the stretcher was picked up and carried offscreen.

     The picture switched to Geraldo and the nerdly gentleman, who, along with the National Guardsmen, stood watching what was now a picture of themselves on their offscreen video monitor in complete and utter shock.  No one moved, spoke or even breathed.  All around in the background, noises of various troop movements around the building were audible, and in one corner of the screen, Sam could see through an artillery hole in the wall that a fighter plane was flying by.  Quiet sounds of war were the only noise for a moment in the Capital Building, until the voice of Dan Rather from the studio broke the silence.

     "Uh, Geraldo, that certainly was a chilling report, live from the field."

The screen split into two sections, one of Dan and one of the Capital Building scene, Geraldo holding the mic at his waist, arms dangling.  He was staring off into space like he couldn't move or speak, which seemed to indeed be the case for him as well as the troops surrounding him.  The nerdly gentleman fidgeted, and straightened his tie.

     "Geraldo," Dan Rather prodded, "What is your situation?  Can you hear me?"

     No reaction from Geraldo.

     The nerdly gentleman picked up Geraldo's mike, and looked into the camera.  Grabbing the earphone out of Rivera's ear, he spoke into the mike.

     "Dan?  Uh, Mr. Rather, are you there?"  He stuck the earphone in, and adjusted it.

     Rather nodded on the left-hand side of the screen, surprised at the development.  He rolled with it.  "Uh, yes, we are receiving you.  Is Geraldo Rivera all right?  Can you tell us what's going on there?"

     With a dramatic raise of his eyebrow, the nerd said, "Yes, Dan, but first, I'd like to tell you about the cover-up of this thing that could be said to be the worst in the hist—"

     Geraldo Rivera came out of his trance, looking at the nerdly gentleman, and hit him with his open hand, knocking him down off camera.  "Shut up, asshole," he said, and walked toward the camera, offscreen.  The feed went dead, and the screen widened back to a full-sized Dan Rather, who segued out of it well and went on about the implications and so on.  Sam's attention strayed as the newscast went on into recap mode.

     "Wow." Sam remarked, looking at Glen, Who was atop the stepladder holding a strip of dripping papier-mâché.

     Glen shrugged.  "Yep.  Wow."  He continued laying strips of papier-mâché on the nearly-covered beast.  "It's a pretty strange deal, isn't it?"

     Sam got up, incredulous of Glen's apparent ambivalence to the situation.  It almost made Sam angry.

     "Why Don’t you give a fuck about all this?  And why do you keep working on that thing?  As if there's going to be a Halloween this year!"  Sam was in his face, practically shouting.

     Glen stepped down to floor level, and faced Sam.  "Yo, Sam, dude, chill out.  It's not like it's the end of th— uh, forget it.  Look, It's just like the War In The Gulf, the Russia coup, all that shit.  It's stuff on TV, which I think is interesting, but life goes on, right?  It doesn't affect me. I have lived for twenty-three years, and every one of those years there's been a Halloween, so why should I expect this one to be any different?  I mean, for all we know this might be a tactic by the President to get re-elected.  He probably invented the whole thing, so it would make him look good when he solves the problem.  What's a few million dead, anyway, right?  Too damn many people on this planet, anyway.  I'm going to assume that things will go on as normal, because if they don’t, it won't matter what I do.  Meanwhile, all these idiots are running around panicking—they're going to look mighty stupid if this is all just a joke.  Don’t you remember back when Orson Welles did that War of the Worlds radio program, and people went off killing themselves because they believed the world was really ending and aliens were invading?  Hell, man, Halloween is only a few days away; this is probably some kind of 50th anniversary deal or something.  Besides, I'm covered in any case.  I sent in my thirty bucks to the Church of the SubGenius two paychecks ago."  Glen picked up his bowl of flour-water and climbed back up the stepladder to put the finishing touches on the beast.

     Sam knew that Glen had lost his mind.

     "I'm gonna call Brian," Sam said, moving purposefully toward the telephone.

     "Don’t bother," said Glen, "The phones are so tied up, you can't get through.  After I called you, I tried to order a pizza for ten minutes and got some military recording telling me to hang up and not try again."  Glen held his nose and said in a nasal operator's voice, "Lines are busy at this time."

     Sam felt trapped.  He stared at the TV and tried to think of what to do, where to go.  Glen had always seemed fairly mentally stable; now he happily worked on holiday arts and crafts while the world was on fire.  Jesus.

     Sam picked up the remote and turned to CNN.  More reports of the alien massacre.  At one point before a commercial, the words WAR OF THE WORLDS zoomed up to the screen in brilliant post-production letters and sat there fluctuating and gleaming with little metallic glints and streaks as if light were panning over them.  Sam couldn't stand it.

     "Aauugh!" he screamed, turning it off.  He sat down Indian-style, and cradled his head in his hands.

     "Hey," Glen called down from the stepladder, "Whad'ya turn that off for?  CNN has the best coverage of any network, man!"  He relaxed.  "Oh, well, I guess it's cool.  Probably won't have anything new for awhile, anyway."  Glen got down again and set his bowl on the floor.  "Look, Sam," he said, "I'm getting kinda tired of this.  Wanna play some D&D?"

     Sam was just about to hit Glen when a very loud noise like rushing air came from outside.  As wind from the open window blew through Sam's hair, he already knew what was causing it, and his feeling of terror increased tenfold.  The aliens had landed in town, and they were right outside Glen's house.

     Glen busted ass over to the window to get a better look. "Wow!  Look at that!"  Against his better judgement, Sam went over to the window to see that an alien craft had indeed landed in Glen's driveway, crushing two cars doing so.  The craft was identical to the one Sam had seen on television just minutes ago.  A slit appeared in the metal of the ship, and a hole grew from it which became a rectangular entrance, or in this case, an exit.

     "Cool," exclaimed Glen, proving in Sam's mind beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt that Glen was in fact certifiable.  As Sam watched, two Communion-style aliens came to the opening holding rayguns, and their very appearance—short, thin greyish-pink-skinned beings with big, bald heads and large, almond-shaped liquid-black eyes—was disturbing enough to send Sam right 'round the twist.  Reality then bent for Sam, and he enjoyed the pleasant feeling of his mind snapping.  The creatures looked around and seemed to be generally enjoying the day.

     Glen perked up and slapped his forehead.  "Shit!  The paint's not even on it yet!"  Sam watched dumbfounded as Glen ran over and dragged the beast into the center of the room by the newspaper it was standing on.  "C'mon, Sam, give me a hand with this!" he said, grabbing a can of black spray paint and throwing it to Sam.  Sam caught it reactively.

     Glen got another can, pulled the cap off of it, and began spray-painting the still-wet papier-mâché as if the world depended on it.  Sam looked out the window, and saw the aliens had descended down a ramp onto the driveway, and were currently heading into the house slowly, enjoying the walk.  One of them gestured with the hand holding the raygun to the house, and the other nodded.  Sam's mind wasn't quite far-gone enough to prevent him to feel renewed fear at the sight of them.

     "C'MON, MAN!" Glen screamed at Sam.  Sam moved away from the window, toward the beast, unsure why.  For lack of anything better to do, and because he felt anything else would be just as hopeless in defense of the alien beings, he helped spray-paint the robotic beast black.  Glen nodded, going up and down in long strokes with the paint can.  "That's it, that's it," he said, grinning.

     Sam was disturbed by Glen's plainly crazy manner, but was at this point crazy enough himself that he simply followed suit, unable to get a grip what was going on.  They had finished about thirty per cent of the painting when they heard the downstairs door open and close.

     "Shit!" Glen said, redoubling his effort.  Sam was somehow struck with the gravity of the situation, and quickened his pace too, though for the life of him he didn't know why.  Might as well get the thing Same before I get vaporized, Sam thought.

     In the next ninety seconds, Glen and Sam painted the rest of the beast, a feat that probably deserved a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records.  Scant seconds after they were finished, Sam heard the front door open and close, and from Glen's room the two could hear the aliens walking down the hall.

     Sam collapsed in a pile, unable to cope.  Glen hit the lights, dropped the spray can and picked up the remote, turning it on.  The beast, now complete, powered up and came to life, eyes blinking and blood flowing.  Ten feet of living Halloween machine was prepared for battle in Glen's room, and not a second too soon.

     The aliens came into view in the doorway to the bedroom.  They were holding the little rayguns in their hands, looking like something out of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Glen moved around behind the beast, and the aliens followed him with their huge liquid eyes.  Sam burst into tears.

     The aliens began making terrifying buzzing sounds, sounds that Sam figured no human ears were ever meant to hear.  The sounds were painful to listen to; painful and frightening.  Glen didn't seem to hear them; he was completely absorbed in controlling the beast, which he now sent after the aliens with much clawing and gnashing of teeth.  The aliens looked surprised.

     Before they could react, the beast tore into them, knocking them over and stepping on them with bony clawed feet.  Glen controlled it to immediately grab one in each remote-controlled prehensile foot and fall onto its back, where it proceeded to rake them with its feet while holding them with its hands like a huge skeletal cat.  The extraterrestrials dropped their rayguns and fought to get away, to little effect.  Sam was still slumped in a paralyzed pile on the floor.

     Glen turned to Sam with eyes wide.  "GET OUT!!  IT'S ME THEY WANT!!  MAKE A BREAK FOR IT!  RUN!"  Sam could somehow sense that he was right.  Sam shook the fear from his head and bolted for the door.  Just as he crossed over the threshold, he again heard the buzzing sound that made his teeth hurt, and turned his head to see they had broken free of the beast.  Sam took off down the stairs four at a time and was out the front door in only a few seconds.

     As he ran, Sam could hear the sounds of battle from the open window; the unmistakable crunch of the beast's jaws closing on grey flesh, and the horrible gurgling of what had to be Glen's blood frying along with the rest of his vaporizing body.  Sam shed a quick tear for his friend, but realized that he had really lost it back there and probably deserved to die anyway.  So, running away from the house and down the driveway to his bike, Sam ignored the open spacecraft that he might possibly have learned to operate before the aliens returned.  As it was, Sam took the low-tech option: he unlocked his bike and made for high ground.  Something inside Sam told him that the grey-skinned demons from beyond had made short work of Glen and were now after him.  He felt pursued like the fox in a hunt.

     Pedaling furiously away, Sam's mind raced even faster than he did.  Where to go?  Who is safe? He thought.  Sam had never before felt alone in the world, trapped among millions.  Heading north, Sam rode his bike faster and harder than he ever had before, sweating with the effort of escape.  Knowing that there were no cars on the road, he paused for no traffic control of any kind, feeling none of the spite or glee that he might usually when breaking the law.  His mind was focused on one single imperative: sanctuary.

     Coasting throughout a normally busy intersection against the light, Sam saw from the clouds of dense black smoke that something downtown was on fire.  No, check that; downtown itself was on fire.  Sam rode towards the smoke—where there's smoke there's fire, and at least there were bound to be some other people there among whom he could hide.  It took him about three minutes at a slightly reduced pace to get to city hall.  From there, what he saw gladdened his heart and lifted a great weight from his shoulders.

     There, down the block, a group of people, or rather, an angry mob had an alien craft turned over and burned to a cinder.  The heat from the burning extraterrestrial substance the ship was made from had caught most of the nearby buildings on fire, and the smoke coming from the ship was the most noxious Sam had ever smelled.  But that was not the interesting thing; the crowd had cornered four aliens in the street and was in the process of torturing them.  Sam thought they looked like children, cornered and pathetic.

     As he rode toward the scene, Sam noticed that a large monitor had been set up in the street to which loudspeakers had been connected.  The image of a middle-aged man was gesticulating wildly onscreen, and his voice from the loudspeakers was inciting the crowd in a manner Sam could liken only to an evangelist.  Robert Tilton Vs. the Aliens, he thought.

     Sam reached the crowd and threw his bike down on the pavement.  After only a few moments, he grasped the purpose of the monitor and the loudspeakers; it appeared to be some organized government media barrage to coordinate citizens against the aliens.  The man on the screen was instructing people how to connect their minds together to psychically destroy the invading beings.  The crowd was now moving together; the man on the screen was shouting for them to join hands, forming a chain of human thought.  Sam complied although he couldn't help feeling like he was part of some intergalactic Harmonic Convergence.  He felt a group hug coming on and he didn't like it.

     Sam took the hand of a man next to him and that of a girl to his left.  The girl smiled at Sam, a sort of gee-we're-all-caught-up-in-this-oh-well smile.  Sam gripped her hand in understanding and looked to the screen.  There was a pause as the crowd waited for further instruction.

     Suddenly, the cornered aliens raised their thin eerie-looking arms, and like magicians, released an energy field that dispersed throughout the crowd surrounding them.  Sam saw the inner circle of people shudder and get thrown back just before he felt the shockwave hit him.  Through the hand of the man he received an electromagnetic charge like liquid fire and passed it to the girl.  Sam's body felt like it was melting; his synaptic circuits overloaded and shut down and every hair on his body singed slightly.  The wave passed through the crowd and then just as quickly was gone, breaking the connection.  Helpless, the people in the crowd could only stand uselessly and look; they were stunned and in a state of psychic shock.  Sam's overloaded senses perceived the aliens pushing their way through the deadened crowd.  They were escaping.

     As if to make matters worse, a familiar rushing of air noise down the street signaled the appearance of another alien craft, and Sam was sure even through his dulled brain that it was the same one whose occupants had killed Glen, and almost gotten him, too.  As the crowd recovered, the aliens broke free and walked casually toward the oncoming craft.  The ship shuddered slightly, and then came to a stop hovering directly over them.  A flash of green light brighter than the day streaked out from the ship and struck the escaped aliens, and they vanished.  Sam, along with the other bewildered members of the crowd, felt a sense of loss that they had successfully escaped.

     The alien craft began to reorient itself, rotating slightly and slowly rising above the charred remains of the buildings of downtown.  Below, the crowd on the street was silent, watching the ship and trying to shake off the dullness of the concussion that had hit them.  The crackling of fire came from all around, and not even the spacecraft itself made a sound as it lifted up through the city sky.  Sam began looking for his bike.

     Someone was screaming.  Sam looked, saw that a kid about fifteen was pointing to the monitor, some heavy metal dickhead.  Making a ruckus.  What was he saying?  Sam looked at the monitor.  The sound was off, someone else was trying to reconnect the leads; they must've come out during the energy surge.  The televangelist-guy was gesticulating and moving his eyebrows a lot and suddenly his voice came on real loud, screaming about the Psychic Kill.  He had a crystal on, Sam noticed, but he figured it was probably just for New Age appeal.  The man was saying that the combined willpower of the group focused on the little black pyramids on the aliens' control panel would destroy their ships.

     The crowd was getting charged from the man's rhetoric; they began nodding and grouping together again, taking hands and looking upward to the ship that was climbing steadily up and away.  Sam concentrated on the objective as the evangelistic national leader ranted furiously with much facial bravado, commanding groups all over to destroy.  Gradually, as the crowd gathered energy and strength, Sam felt his will and power give in to the collective consciousness.  He felt himself swimming in an electric pool of voices, a symphony of destructive hate that was a weapon as old as mankind, a weapon that had always been there for man to use—he had only to access it.

     The evangelist's vocal cues had come to a climax with the group's power buildup, and with his command of "Release!"—the crowd all at once un-tensed their hands, forcing their collective mental energy through a channel the size of a pin at the nearly-gone spaceship far above.  The spectacle was impressive.  The ship glowed briefly with a yellow fire, and then exploded quietly into slivers of white-hot metallic debris, which rained down harmlessly over the crowd and the rest of the city.  The crowd began to disperse, some members indeed feeling the need for hugging and other emotional displays which turned Sam's already growling stomach.

     Sam found his bike and rode off towards home, feeling drained....

     ...And woke up.  A dream...it had all been a dream, he thought, reaching for the glass of water on the nightstand and shaking his head.  Shit, what a deal.  The darkness of Sam's room was barely pierced by the line of daylight that came from around the curtained window, illuminating the various books and magazines strewn about the floor.  Running his hands through his hair, Sam took a drink and set the glass down.  The sleep was long in leaving his brain; Sam yawned and just sat in bed for a moment, thinking on his strange nightmare.  Today is Halloween, he remembered.  Big day. 

     Grabbing the blanket from his bed, Sam got up and wrapped it around him like a huge towel.  He walked to the fridge, opened it, and got a nearly-empty bottle of cola out, uncapped it and finished it off, throwing the remains into the trash.  While the door was open, Sam found some crackers and cheese that would go no great distance in sating his hunger, but hey, it was food.  He also procured a fresh bottle of caffeinated beverage with which to awaken his mind, which he found was still focused on his dream.

     Sam walked back to the bed and sat down to eat, drink, and cogitate.  No way, he thought, that whole premise is just bullshit.  After all, it was impossible to destroy anything with your mind, whether you linked it together with a bunch of yahoos or not—even if such were possible.  Sam munched, and shook his head.  Psychic stuff just doesn't work like that.  Why would I have such a stupid New-Age dream?  It didn't make sense.  Aliens couldn't be stopped by mind power, no fuckin' way.  If they existed at all, and Sam wasn't all too sure about that anyway.  Nope, if aliens came down, God, guns and guts would be the only three to set us free.

     Having finished his small repast, Sam lay back down on the bed, and closed his eyes. Even though he had just awakened, he had an uneasy feeling; he'd been feeling out of sorts lately.  Kind of under the weather.  He gradually fell into a relaxed state of being, resting comfortably.

     A sound.  Sort of a pop, a crack like a twig snapping.  From the closet area.  Sam raised his head, looked over to see what was up.  Nothing, probably.  Old houses make noises.  Sam was just freaked out after having had such a weird nightmare, that's all.  He laid his head back down and closed his eyes.

     Buzzing noises, now.

     Oh God.

     Sam quickly wondered what the chances were that he was insane or dreaming again.  He was scared.  SCARED.  His fears were confirmed when he opened his eyes to see that aliens were in his room, four of them.  Real ones.  They didn't look exactly like the ones from Communion, they were slightly taller, had rounder eyes, but they were definitely not men from the realty bureau.  Sam sat up fast and reached under the bed to grab the nunchaku he'd stored there for just such a special occasion.  The extraterrestrials advanced, buzzing loudly and scaring Sam the rest of the way out of his mind.  They were coming for him.

     Sam's first swing as they came within range had no effect.  It landed home, but the alien it hit didn't seem bothered by it at all.  They just kept coming, with a cold, clinical attitude that Sam felt was not friendly at all.  His second swing was more out of desperation than a serious attack, as he put no real power in it and broke into a sobbing fit, trying to back away into the corner.  They reached out for him.  Sam screwed up his courage, and willed all his mental energy into a micro-thin beam of kinetic energy charged to the max with all the fear and emotional anguish he was feeling.  Just as the lead alien grabbed him, Sam let loose with every ounce of psychic force he could muster, sapping the rest of his mind with the effort.

     It didn't work.

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THE PERFECT PUMPKIN

by John Claude Smith